


A Ventriloquist for suffering

by horrorriz



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Childhood Trauma, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Fix-It, Gen, Penn origin story, Penn survive the Haven explosion, Season 5 Fix-It, Takes place after S05E03, doll - Freeform, fear of dolls, how?, puppet, well take a wild guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrorriz/pseuds/horrorriz
Summary: Mr. Penn wakes up surrounded by smoke and flames, the Haven about to blow up. When he hear a voice calling to him, offering him not only his survival... But a purpose.





	A Ventriloquist for suffering

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Arthur Penn is his full name.

 

 

_“Get up.”_

A voice echoed, a mere whisper that thundered in his ear at the same time. The room was spinning and he could feel himself coughing up a rather generous portion of blood. What happened? The memories were blurred, ringing in his ears, the world seeming distant and dim.

Yet one voice rang clearer than anything.

_“If you want to live, you get up. Coward!”_

It sounded like an order rather than a suggestion, and having been coaxed to follow the words of others his entire life…- Mr. Penn blinked and like a strike of lightning the memories came flashing back.

Haven, Mr. Cobblepot- The throbbing gunshot through his abdomen...!

He sat up much faster than his severe injury allowed and groaned in pain, turning over to throw up a heap of blood on the floor, staining his hands, vertigo overpowering him.

 

 _“You have gone through your entire life as a puppet for others to pull the strings, time to step up and be the ventriloquist of your own suffering,”_ the voice stated. Mocking but with that hint of clarity again. It wasn’t like the words were anything but the truth in any case.

All his life had been on terms of other, far more powerful personalities. He had worked most of his life for the Falcone family. A scared, skittish teenage boy with the unfortunate fate of being a distant relative of the infamous, fearful mob family. His parents killed off in order to make an example for a transaction gone wrong - a mere miscount on the Don’s side, the entire world turned upside down for Arthur Penn.

In an attempt to redeem the misfortune, Penn was offered to stay in the care of the Falcones. Guaranteed a job and safety for life as redemption for his loss.

Time passed, the Don suffered for the karma of his own wayward ways and passed away long before his time, his son taking over at a young age.

Arthur would describe their relationship as a sort of friendship bound by business, he could always count on Mr. Falcone just as he could always count on Penn.

Until he too, was no more. Taken by the outcome of his line of work, caused by the hands of his only still living child, driving her to revenge by the neglected upbringing she had endured.

Lost in the world, much too accustomed to following others in order to make his own informed decisions… He found himself crawling back to the Penguin with an apology on his lips.

With how the Don had nurtured the fellow crime lord like the son he had always wanted, Penn thought it only as fair to lay his loyalty into Cobblepot’s hands, wholeheartedly this time.

 

 _Everyone hated you._ The memory of his own last words to the man was fresh and bled with the wound in his stomach, bullet still hot and lethal.

 _-...Except me._ The sentence finished, not that Mr. Cobblepot ever got to hear the sentiment.

 

 _“You answer to no one but yourself.”_ , the voice bluntly told him.

 

Finally, Penn scrambled to a pair of wobbly legs. Weak with the acute blood loss, running on pure adrenaline for survival.

He followed the voice luring him out of the room, to the adjoining bedroom quarters normally occupied by the Haven’s many children, now standing gapingly empty. Where was everyone?

Arthur coughed, as the air was wearing thin and it was becoming hard to breathe, spitting out another chunk of blood. Was that smoke in the air?

For a moment he thought he heard the distant screams of children, the terror of men knowing their end was coming. Sounds he had grown so used to that it didn’t even register to him as anything odd for the moment.

All he could hear, was the voice, growing closer now.

Mr. Penn’s eyes went wide as he found himself face to face with an old hand puppet, with its wooden structure and gaping mouth. Arthur gasped, his leg gave way and he stumbled down onto the hard flooring. The doll kept its dead gaze and Penn could swear he saw its mouth open when the voice came back, stronger than ever.

_“Pick me up, be my embodiment of this reality and by helping me come alive, I will save us both.”_

 

Wasn’t that the ever-growing irony of Gotham? Making one’s biggest fear become your salvation.

Perhaps his memories were compromised, warped by the trauma… But he could have sworn he had seen a puppet -uncanny how much it had looked like this one, dropping to the floor to bore its empty, painted eyes as penetrating his very soul. Spotting his hiding place under the bed as he heard the gunshots and his parents falling dead to the floor. The blood pooling in a line which reached his hiding, forcing him to swallow the screams of despair threatening to climb up his throat. _Survive._ Had been his only thought, as it was now.

 

He suddenly became aware of the flames licking up the walls, about to engulf the entire place in it’s burning jaws.

 

Crawling, practically dragging himself forward with a line of his own blood following behind, he kept himself low as he made his way towards the puppet.

With a shaking, unsteady hand and scarlet stained fingers, he reached for it, seeing its painted lips impossibly curl up in a pleased smirk of victory.

Mr. Penn put his arm into the opening and, like a strike of lightning, it was as if his veins caught fire. He had to check twice to see if the flames had, indeed, gotten to it, but all he could see was the puppet turning to face him, seemingly moving by its own accord.

He held his free hand to his throat as he felt like he was once again choking, but no blood came this time. Instead, he felt his vocal cords vibrate and a low, dull voice, an echo of his own, spoke.

“Get up on your lazy legs and get us out of here already, this place is about to blow!”

 

Arthur complied, not finding it in himself to argue with a puppet. An apparent figment of his imagination, a woken nightmare from the depths of his broken mind. Coming to life with the hallucinations that followed the thin line with chances for survival he walked. Floating aimlessly between life and death.

Staggering through the burning frames of the building, rapidly coming apart. He made it out just in time to see it burst in an explosion behind him.

The puppet kept muttering, pushing him to keep going. Getting him to a safe position, locating a first aid kit to go through the experience of removing the bullet and stitching himself up. Something he would have passed out by the mere thought of if not for the puppet guiding him through it.

A voice that felt increasingly familiar, pushing and leading him through the dangers of Gotham, keeping him afloat as he did his best to make do.

Teaching him how to stay alive in the cursed city, as it was now offering him a way -not only to survive but to _thrive._ No longer a prisoner of other’s greed for power, using him as a stepping stool towards dominance.

Somehow, it felt like it had always been there, lingered deep within his subconscious. The dormant advocate for his survival. Only just now impersonated by the rather hostile puppet. The everlasting irony how it had offered Penn his freedom, yet he felt as if he was the one being controlled.

 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Arthur. We are simply a team,” the doll told him, turning its head in a stiff movement to look at him.

“With my influencing tactics and that calculating mind you hide deep within that head of yours, we can be more than a raggedy old bookkeeper. You will never have to feel powerless ever again.”

 

“I am hardly material for any leadership,” Mr. Penn declared.

 

“Aren’t you tired? Of being scared, always hiding, switching sides to ensure your survival. Wouldn’t you prefer a life where you were the conductor of your own success? Where they answered to _your_ demands?”

 

“At the end of the day, I am nothing but an assistant.” Penn sounded sad, forlorn in his tone.

 

“With our combined forces, we could be unstoppable. Domineering enough to bring anyone to our feet, even the Penguin if you so wished.”

 

Arthur wrapped the last row of the bandage tightly around his abdomen, securing the newly sewn shut wound.

“Mr. Cobblepot is the only one who had been truly kind to me, respected me and appreciated me for my services,” he said absentmindedly, the exhaustion of almost dying, of getting out of the burning building by sheer adrenaline itself catching up to him. That’s without even considering the bizarre turn his life had taken with his new… Accomplice? Partner? Was that what they were now? It certainly felt like what the puppet had in mind.

 

The blunt voice of the puppet scoffed, a bark of twisted, dark laughter that dripped heavy with the kind of confidence Arthur had never believed himself to possess.

 

“Don’t you understand? He simply used you, pretended that you mattered. In the end, all that he cares about is himself. I thought he had made that very clear?”

 

“N-No,” Penn stuttered, finding it hard for the words of denial to come through. “That’s where you’re wrong. He knew my loyalty was real.”

 

“When are you gonna see that you were meant for more than being someone’s underdog?”

 

Mr. Penn slowly started to drift out of consciousness after that, collapsing into the makeshift bed of the abandoned apartment they had found. His body and mind far too worn out to be having this argument right now, he needed rest before he would even be able to consider what the puppet suggested.

Could he really be more than the equivalent to a secretary of the underworld?

 

***

 

The next few weeks consisted of the bare necessities, minimum food in order to keep going, surviving the still harsh conditions of this no man’s land.

While his wound slowly healed, the puppet would never stop pestering him about his latent potential for greatness. It kept going on for weeks… Until he finally found himself at the place that made the least and most sense of all; outside the heavy doors leading to Oswald’s office in City Hall.

 

He took a deep breath as he pushed the door open, relieved but not surprised by the lack of security. It seemed like Mr. Cobblepot had not taken his last piece of advice after all.

 

The penguin shot up from his desk as soon as his eyes landed on his former bookkeeper, that he thought to be dead.

“Penn?” Oswald gasped in surprise, at first. Quickly morphing into something much uglier, closer to the true ruthless sense of nature the Penguin had garnered as of late. “What’s the meaning of this? What is that doll?!”

He glanced over the odd-looking, old puppet dressed neatly in a pinstripe suit and outfit, topped with a hat and a nasty looking cigar sticking out of its foul mouth.

Mr. Penn had taken matters to improve the raggedy dolls look, dressing it up to resemble his old boss that now stood before him. A final tribute and his sign of independence.

 

Penn opened his mouth to speak but quickly closed it as the puppet, with the help of his own movement -even if it, for the most part, felt as though the doll moved with will of its own, raised its tommy gun (looking comically large in comparison to the small doll) towards Oswald.

 

“I’m the one that’s going to take down your fragile-looking empire.”

 

Mr. Penn felt it before the action was even initiated, letting out a low scream of anguish, warning for what was to come. His last action of loyalty towards his former boss.

The gun went off in a rapid shower of bullets, and Oswald took shelter the best he could with his limited movements. However, he was too slow to get through completely unharmed, he suffered from a hit to his bad leg. Staggering in behind his desk as the doll ceased fire.

 

“Why did you have to do that?” Penn pleads the doll. “We agreed we only came here to talk!”

 

“Talking got you nowhere before and that’s not about to change. When did the Penguin ever listen to what you had to say?”, the puppet scoffed back.

 

While the two remained distracted by their own internal bickering, Oswald took the opportunity to charge forward with knife held high.

Mr. Penn instinctively shielded himself from the attack, making the knife dig deep into the wooden surface of the puppet’s face.

  
The Penguin let go of the knife in order to grab the gun from the puppet’s grasp to use for further protection, yanking himself backwards and pointing the gun back at the duo.

“For old time’s sake, and for the loyalty you’ve shown. I am willing to let you go, just this once,” he snarled, spitting as his anger threatened to seep over the edge.

“I owe that much to Falcone,” he deadpanned.

 

Without further arguments, Arthur’s gaze jumped from the exit back to the Penguin’s eyes seething with rage, practically shaking as he refrained from acting on it and killing Penn right there and then.

“Mr. Cobblepot I… Am sorry,” Mr. Penn said before he bolted for the door and hurried out of the establishment.

 

***

 

When back to safety, Penn carefully removed the knife from the puppet’s head and curiously stroked the apparent carve it left behind.

The doll scoffed as usual.

“I blame this newly scarred face of mine on your sentimental feelings for the Penguin.”

 

Penn traced the line once more. “I believe it adds a bit of charisma, makes you appear more… Ominous.”

 

“I suppose a trademark name is somewhat a given thing in this godforsaken city?”

 

“Quite right, Mr. Scarface, sir.” Penn smirked.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I have been so utterly upset over the fact Mr. Penn was killed off without the chance of becoming the Ventriloquist so I had to write this out simply to deal with the loss. ...And to give him a chance of surviving. Naturally.
> 
> I enjoyed writing this and I hope someone found this and got some ease for seeing Penn survive. I've taken as much in mind I can about the canon we know about Penn and what Andrew Sellon have said in comments and interviews.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you [221blackandwhitestripes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/221blackandwhitestripes) for helping me beta read and edit this story!


End file.
